Watch Chester Bennington’s former bandmate recall star’s mother’s touching story about late singer

Dead By Sunrise's Ryan Shuck told anecdote at recent tribute concert

A former bandmate of Linkin Park‘s late frontman Chester Bennington has recalled a touching story about the singer from when he was a child.

The nu-metal idol was found dead in his California home after taking his own life on July 20. He was aged just 41-years-old.

A tribute concert was held in Bennington’s honour at the Saxe Theater in Las Vegas on September 2. Among those performing was Dead By Sunrise, a side-project formed by Bennington in 2005.

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Addressing the audience during the show, the band’s guitarist Ryan Shuck shared a story told to him by Chester’s mother, Susan, about when her son learned to sing at the age of two.

“[We] all took Susan to dinner, I fucking love that we did that, because I was going downhill,” Shuck said. “So we went to dinner and we started talking. Susan was super grateful, she was like, ‘Thank you so much. I didn’t know that I needed to get out, but I did. I’m so grateful that we’re having dinner together, and grateful.’ That’s a concept, grateful. I started feeling happy as Susan started telling us stories about Chester when he was a 2-year-old.”

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington
Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington

“She was telling me that he learned the entire Popeye movie at like 2 or 3 years old. He would sing and act out all the parts for everyone that came over to the house, the whole thing, and he would make them listen to the whole thing, he would make them sit. This is like little Chester, he probably weighed like 4 pounds, probably as big as a chihuahua. He was a little guy for a long time before he became [a big star].”

Shuck continued; “We were all laughing at dinner, and we discovered something, that whenever we started talking about Chester, we couldn’t help but start laughing and having a good time. You can probably tell, I was pretty emotional when I came up, but as you start talking about him, you can’t help but start smiling. That’s what happened, and that gave me the direction to start writing something for his actual eulogy.”

Watch Shuck tell the story at the 1 hour 24 minute mark in the video below:

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Meanwhile, Bennington‘s widow Talinda has shared a photo of the late Linkin Park frontman taken just days before he died.

Sharing a recent photo of a family holiday, she wrote: “This was days before my husband took his own life. Suicidal thoughts were there, but you’d never know. #fuckdepression”.

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